at the village church on Sundays, being supported by his wife, who was the one crying for help. He was gasping for breath with face purple, eyes bulging, and was choking. His mouth was wide open and she could see that his tongue was swollen and blocking the airway.
‘Go and fetch Dad!’ she cried to the children, and as they sprinted off she asked the organist’s wife what he’d been eating to cause such a situation. At the same time she took hold of him, pulled him upright, and from behind gave him the treatment for a choking fit, arms tightly locked at the top of the rib cage and a sudden strong compression. It often did the trick, but not this time. No food or anything else came shooting from his mouth.
‘He’s allergic to seafood!’ his wife cried, ‘but he didn’t eat anything like that at the wedding reception, which is where we had our last meal.’
A shadow fell across them and Ethan was there. ‘Help me to lay him flat, Francine,’ he said urgently, ‘and then find something to prop his feet on to raise them.’ He turned to the man’s horrified wife. ‘Has he got the emergency syringe of adrenaline with him that he’s supposed to carry at all times?’
‘Jacket pocket!’ she cried, and within seconds he was injecting the lifesaving medication into the limp figure lying in the snow.
‘It’s anaphylactic shock,’ he told Francine grimly, ‘and unless the injection relieves the constriction of the lungs and airways in the next few seconds, we’re going to lose him. We’ve been along this road once before, but the attack wasn’t as severe as this. I might have to go to the surgery to get further supplies of the adrenaline if he doesn’t respond. It’s fortunate that it’s just across the way. Can you ring for an ambulance? Even if he comes round all right from the one injection, I don’t want to take any risks.’
She’d been checking the man’s pulse and heartbeat, which were pounding out of control, and nodded at the request, explaining as she did so, ‘I didn’t get the chance before. Thank God you were near and knew his case history. But this kind of thing comes on almost immediately after eating food that the person is allergic to, so what has he been eating that his wife doesn’t know about?’
‘Bradley didn’t partner me in the dancing,’ his wife explained weakly. ‘So maybe he’s been to the stall that’s selling food and drinks over there.’
The two doctors were only half listening. Francine was making the phone call and Ethan was watching keenly as the choking began to slowly subside and the tongue began to go forward once more leaving the airways clearer.
He gave a sigh of relief. The whole incident had taken just a matter of minutes, seconds almost, but if he and Francine hadn’t been there…
She was switching her phone off and placing a comforting arm around the shoulders of the organist’s wife and he thought for a moment that it had been almost like how it used to be with the two of them caring for the folks in Bluebell Cove.
He was still doing that, but she wasn’t, and as he noted thankfully that the stricken man’s heartbeat and pulse had stabilised he wondered what had brought her back to the place where she’d once been happy and contented.
When the ambulance had left, the children had gone to seek out their friends and for Francine and Ethan the brief feeling of togetherness that the incident had created hung between them like a question mark.
She was pale and shaking after the urgency of the situation, the need to act fast because a life had been at stake, and he placed his arm around her shoulders, held her close for a second and said gently, ‘What a homecoming for you, Francine. Do you think that you and I deserve top marks for effort now that Bradley will live to see another day? We were right back on line like we used to be, weren’t we?’
‘Yes, professionally maybe,’ she agreed stiltedly as panic took hold at the thought of him describing her presence back in his life as a homecoming, ‘Though I’m only here on a visit.’
‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’ he asked, his voice tightening with disappointment.
‘It was on impulse, a last-minute thing. I felt I just had to be with the children at Christmas,’ she said awkwardly, knowing that she’d not kept to the arrangements they’d agreed on regarding who Kirstie and Ben should be with and when. ‘I’ve put my things in the spare room. I hope that’s all right.’
‘No, it isn’t!’ he gritted. ‘Take the master bedroom. I’ll sleep in the spare room. The house is still your home as far as I’m concerned. So shall we go there instead of making a spectacle of ourselves in front of what is left of the wedding party?’
‘Jenna and Lucas saw you trying to keep out of sight for some reason best known only to yourself and said to tell you that you’re invited to the evening reception, which starts in an hour at the Enderbys’ farmhouse.’
Kirstie and Ben weren’t far away and he went on to explain, ‘Needless to say, the children and I are going as I was best man for Lucas, and Kirstie was Jenna’s bridesmaid.’
He looked across at the children, who were engrossed in throwing snowballs, and said, ‘Don’t spoil their Christmas, Francine.’
She swallowed hard. Kirstie had been a bridesmaid and Ethan best man for his friend and she hadn’t been there, and now he was warning her not to spoil their Christmas. Was this what she’d come to? Was his opinion of her now as low as that?
Yet she’d had to tell herself the same thing, not to let the huge well of misery inside her loose on those she loved.
As they walked towards the house she said, to try and placate him, ‘I haven’t stopped loving this place, you know, Ethan.’
‘But not enough to live in it,’ he commented dryly.
‘I haven’t crossed the Channel to have all my shortcomings pointed out.’
‘No, you haven’t. Forget I said that.’
He wasn’t to know that now she’d got what she wanted and was living in the beautiful house near Paris that had been her home during her childhood and early teens, she felt as if the price she was paying to live there permanently was too high, and she’d get the feeling of choking and breathlessness that came with panic.
She hadn’t stopped to think things through properly when in hurt and anger she’d asked for a divorce, and now that it was under way and she was installed there, she was floundering instead of rejoicing, feeling that Ethan would never forgive her for the way she’d cared only about her own needs.
‘I don’t want us to change bedrooms,’ she told him when they arrived back at the house. ‘I’ll be fine in the spare room. I didn’t come to cause any upheaval and in keeping with that will give the wedding reception a miss, I think. Something tells me I won’t be flavour of the month amongst your friends and the surgery crowd. I left them in the lurch when I went chasing off to France, didn’t I, even though I was only a part-time G.P.?’
‘You’ve got to come, Maman,’ Kirstie pleaded. ‘There will be lots of nice things to eat and music and dancing.’
‘I will stay with Maman,’ Ben said quickly, as an escape from something he wasn’t looking forward to presented itself.
Ethan shook his head. ‘No, Ben. There will be plenty of time for you to be with your mother
